‘And Then She Was Bad’ A Mike Malone Murder Mystery

When the naked body of a young man is found in a local beauty spot, Detective Inspector Mike Malone has two problems.

Firstly to find the young man’s identity and secondly to find out who murdered him. However, things are never simple and when Mike also discovers that one of his own is in trouble, he realises that an old adversary is once again playing him for a fool.

With Detective Alan Shepherd at his side, Mike follows the twists and turns of both cases, finding along the way that sometimes love and sex can be two sides of a very twisted coin.

This seventh novel in the series is once again a quirky trip into the town that Mike Malone has made his own and familiar faces pop up to make their voices heard.

Copyright Francis Barker 2020

Milly Reynolds’ first book, ‘The Woolly Murders’

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Photo by Donald Tong on Pexels.com

The prologue and first chapter of Milly Reynolds’ first book, The Woolly Murders.

 

Poem: Whose History

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Places you’ve walked by all your life,
the things you’ve missed
and taken for granted.
Windows buried, their arches
showing above ground,
what we may call Early English,
disguised by brick and tarmac –
the layers of untold history:
a million stories lost in the retelling

copyright Francis Barker 2020

Poem: Wordspiller (for Kit Marlowe) Updated

man standing on stage
Photo by Ruca Souza on Pexels.com

So you are the spiller of words, almost
as far from me as
Beowulf is to you.

Wordspiller, your crosspose outstands me,
but I backthink
the falling choirs where you sadwalked

your summerwaiting mind, to
when your glories were mere
airthought,

like the Greathallow who once
shorestepped there
to see for himself

your forliving Angles (he oncebethought
angels) and their saxon King
Ethelbert redeemed to newspells that

you mindweighed as truthless.
Now I meet your clearstead gaze; for
the muse which stretchfed you

has not alleaten you yet

poem © copyright Francis Barker 2012

Haiku: To Be English

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Photo by Pixabay, http://www.pexels.com

This desperation
The English generations
We’ve known nothing else

copyright Francis Barker 2019